This is the list of cards used during our overclocking, temperature and power consumption tests. They were the reference cards from the manufacturers that were operating on earlier versions of their respective drivers.

Note 1: There's a slight discrepancy in driver versions used across all the cards, but bear with us updating of benchmarks is an ongoing process, especially on our new test rig. Despite this, they still paint a reasonably accurate expectation of where the new card stands among the competition.

Note 2 (updated on 2nd June): We have updated a part of our results by using a downclocked Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super Overclock 2GB GDDR5 with the latest NVIDIA ForceWare 320.18 drivers. The card was clocked down to the level of a reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680. We have also updated results from a reference AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 card, together with its latest drivers, the AMD Catalyst Software Suite 13.4. This is achieved by using an overclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB GDDR5 so that it is representative of the aforementioned AMD card to a certain degree.

Note 3: In our performance testing, we left the default temperature ceiling at 80 degrees Celsius as most users would leave it as default. Only at our overclocking exercise did we increase the power target at 104 per cent and our temperature target was automatically increased to 89 degree Celsius.

The key rivals for the GeForce GTX 770 in this stratospheric segment of the market will be the AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, and NVIDIA’s own GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 680. We are expecting the GeForce GTX 770 to outperform the GeForce GTX 680, thanks to its higher base core clock speeds and memory speeds. The only question is, "by how much?"